


In What World

by Rusalkii



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst and Feels, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, In the Fade, In the Veil, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 20:09:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4151217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rusalkii/pseuds/Rusalkii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inquisitor Lavellan tries to wander, rather than wonder, the Fade. A teeny tiny writing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In What World

**Author's Note:**

> My written Dalish Inquisitor is a mage, who did-NOT/will-NOT drink from the Well of Sorrows (although that could be pretty fun to write... no knowledge for the sake of knowledge! - & I don't feel that I know enough to fill in even more missing gaps, more importantly). The name 'Eluvia' isn't what I used for my playthrough, instead borrowed from a star constellation discovered via an Astrarium in the Emerald Graves.. and there are some tweaks here and there in these random writings... I apologise for any imperfections, but please correct me on anything that you find irritates you too much!

Inquisitor Eluvia Lavellan was sat at a riverbank in a clearing of the forest. The emerald foam washed over her toes, and she watched at how the dirt would plume as she dug her heels into the sand. And just how many tiny silver fish played around her ankles until a ripple would send them on their way.

  
A small splash nearby broke her serenity, and she saw a golden Halla on an island in the middle of the river, its hooves treading lightly toward her. And she clucked at it, letting it know she was aware and meant no harm. She marvelled at its antlers, which looked like magic may have once spurred from its head before turning to frozen gold.

  
_I know you._ Eluvia thought, and it tousled her hair with its nose. She raised her hand to touch and it licked her in reply, with a tongue that seemed to curl around her forearm. "But I am not me anymore." She said sadly, and the voice did not seem like her own.  The tongue caught her wrist in a grasp, like another hand, and she tugged as though she were pulling elfroot from the ground. The tongue slithered back into its hole.

  
When the Halla licked again, its tongue seemed longer this time and she felt smothered beneath the roughness. She began to feel a pain in her hands, as though sand was being pushed into open wounds. Eluvia looked at where her fingernails should have been, expecting the fires she felt, and instead saw only empty beds of flesh that cracked and oozed.

  
She put her hands in the water to soothe them, but the fire seemed to be spreading through her veins, and up through her elbows. She wondered if her blackened bones could bare her weight. The thundering of wolves clapped through the woods.

  
' _It spreads like lava through her veins... Suffocating smoke... Old fingertips pepper her temples, leaving burns inside her mind... Little holes where ice can't reach... But she wants it to...  She wants the flames quelled before they burn everything._ '

  
"Cole?" The Inquisitor spun round, her long dark hair hung in untamed tangles, almost dreading itself.

  
His nose almost brushed her own, as she spun to him kneeling right behind her. As though he had always been there, watching her intently. "No." She said, as though she were scolding a child she'd scolded a thousand times already, and then paid him no mind. She glanced back to her hands to see her fingernails returned. There was no blood, no protruding flesh. And there was no golden Halla licking at them.

  
And when Eluvia turned back around, there was no Cole. At least not there. He was by her side instead, smiling down at her, and gripping her hand tightly. She saw she was wearing a familiar lambswool tunic that hung to her knees, and the ragged hems seemed like embers for a moment. Her knees where scraped and bleeding, and there were tiny rocks pulling at the fray.

  
Cole looked as if to lead, and though he walked he seemed not intended for anywhere. She wasn't wearing any shoes, and the forest floor had felt the rage of a storm recently. Mud sucked to her feet as she walked, but she coursed through it, enjoying it and feeling like a _da'len_ once more.

  
Coming to a break in the forest, and still hearing the sound of wolves, she wandered with Cole through a thicket of trees that were amassed by herbs snagging at her skin. They came upon a dirt track path that did not seem ever traveled. The floor rumbled , and then the water droplets from each multi-colour flower petal that surrounded them, from every blade of grass and leaf of herb, seemed to rise. The puddles on the floor grew smaller and smaller before they seemed to disintegrate, and evaporate, floating like tiny crystals, breaking through the tree canopies and into the skies.

  
"Is it rain?" Cole asked.

  
She gripped his hand and pulled at him, fearing they had stepped into a Giant's hollow. She jumped a ledge, which was much more sheer than she had anticipated, and then she felt as though she were falling into the Fade again, everything growing darker and more silent as a drowning at the depths of an ocean. She slammed onto a clearing in the Witchwood, and thought she had heard her ribcage crunch and fracture, but felt not even a scratch. Cole seemed nowhere, but she heard his voice fluttering through her head still.

  
' _He is here. His spinning and twisting... Icy burns that splinter and fade. Red eyes... Violet eyes... Broken fingernails... He is digging at the walls he's built around himself. His face is pressed and breathing against glass as much as the next one... I hear claws snapping in the stone._ '

  
She saw giant silver-tight spiderwebs spun above her, the grasses and trees were black but seemed webbed with azure blue arteries. She was apprehensive as she stepped along the silhouettes of trees, and saw the tiny faces of children recoiling coyly into the shadows. _Spirits_?

  
In the moss and heather coated mountains beyond, the moonlight had many eyes peaking through the thickets of flora, and the stars streaked across the night sky. The rain still rose, but each drop rising now turned to moths, which in turn became dust. And there he was, in the darkness of the quarry, on a throne made crudely from Spindleweed that shon a bruising Obsidian as it drank the starlight.

  
"Lethallan." His eyes were warm but his tone was pained. "You found me."

  
"Aneth ara." She said, and then realised that all words had slipped out of her memory, but all emotion came flooding back. The internal fumble seemed to make her throat split. "How could you not think I would? In what world?" And she suddenly felt the fool. _How can you make no way toward me, and leave me to wading through this suffering?_

  
He shifted uncomfortably on his throne, and she saw that weed began to twitch, and grow, and puncture his skin. It weaved the first few layers like needles and thread, and blood began to bead. Still he sat, as though he were letting it happen. _Harden your heart to a cutting edge._

  
Like little black leeches, they pierced through his torso and his shoulders, feeding on what he offered. He gripped his staff in his left hand, but made no move to use it. _You would have me hate you?_ The arms of the weeds grew thicker, and made to grab his wrists and curl fat around his neck. Solas gasped.

  
_No._

  
Spindleweed began to flick back and round, and retract from reddened skin.

  
"Ma'arlath." She stepped towards him, with her hands held outwards to encourage away what had polluted her, but he remained still and without word. "Ar lath ma vhenan. Sathan... don't let me taint this." His face contorted and looked troubled at that, and Eluvia could only let her eyes fall to her toes, hot tears of anger turned to a stinging emptiness.

  
She awoke with pools of sweat on her forehead and at the base of her spine, and to the smell of burning hair. She found that she was dressed in what remained of clothes. The blue and green drapes had disappeared, the paintings on her walls gone. Fabric had been singed in pieces to her arms, and her legs, and she lay on a bed of ash. Half of her had been flayed by fire, and the air around her hurt. Curling up into a ball, and exhaling deeply from the void, she heard footsteps on the stairs to her chamber and silently reveled in the smoke pit she had made.


End file.
